Keke Palmer has always known how to hold a room—whether it’s on screen, on stage, or in the studio. But on her latest single “My Confession,” the performer drops the persona and steps into full vulnerability. Clocking in at under two minutes, the track might be brief, but the emotional payload is anything but light.

Borrowing from the legacy of Usher’s “Confessions Part II,” Palmer reclaims the iconic narrative style to tell her own side of a very public story. In clear-eyed lyrics, she addresses her breakup with Darius Jackson, the father of her child, and the social media storm that followed a now-infamous moment involving Usher in Las Vegas. But what could’ve been tabloid fodder is reframed as something more intimate, something real. “Made me a villain for sympathy, but you lied,” she sings with a calm sting, never dramatic, just direct.

What elevates “My Confession” beyond gossip-response territory is Palmer’s choice to let the music speak. She’s not lashing out—she’s documenting, processing, and narrating her truth with a poet’s restraint. Produced with longtime collaborator Tayla Parx and Kameron Glasper, the track is stripped back and soul-forward, letting the weight of her words ring out.

It’s the second single from her upcoming album Just Keke, a three-act concept project due June 20 via Big Bosses Entertainment and SoNo Recording Group. If lead single “125 Degrees” was the spark, “My Confession” is the aftermath—the part where smoke clears and self-honesty sets in.

Palmer describes Just Keke as a record of “fragmentation and the path to integration.” It’s an ambitious statement from an artist who’s lived her whole life in the public eye but has somehow never been more in control of her story than she is right now.